


The Manner of Giving

by HerenorThereNearnorFar



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Bean Bag Chairs, Everything Is Fine And Everyone Lives, Gen, Post-Canon, Ramifications Of Wonderland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-07 22:58:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11068839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerenorThereNearnorFar/pseuds/HerenorThereNearnorFar
Summary: After the dust settles, Lucretia gives Taako a present.





	The Manner of Giving

The end of the world was a stressful time for everyone. There were deaths and wooden friends and secret memories and forgotten twins coming out of the woodwork. They'd all almost died and then they hadn't. There had been kisses and shouting matches. Magnus had hugged everyone, including the Voidfish. 

At the end of the day, once the catching up and winding down was over, an elf needed some me time, so Taako took it. No one, he reckoned, would dare knock on the door of a hero of the multiverse with a Do Not Disturb sign. 

He only got an hour or so of sulking in before someone came and interrupted him. "Come in, I guess!" he shouted. It was probably Magnus, or Lup. A man he'd spent a century with that he hadn't remembered and the twin sister he'd forgotten. 

It wasn't either of them. It was Lucretia. 

It was so weird looking at her, with one hundred years of memory behind it and yet a strange and insistent sense that this was his _boss_. A barely respected boss, but still someone in authority, someone who wasn't to be trusted. The image of her as a young woman, all made of circles, face round as a plate, wide and curious eyes, a flat round nose and full circle of a mouth, hair curving around her face like a pale moon, kept coming back to him. Juxtaposed with her older, more angular self, hollow cheeked and thin lipped, it was shocking. He couldn't reconcile the two of them. They couldn't possibly be the same person. 

They'd known each other for so freaking long, and then it had turned out that they hadn't known each other at all.

"Heya, 'Cretia," he said, not bothering to get up out of the beanbag on the floor, "Or is it still Madame Director? How about a compromise; Tia Luc?" Magnus had come up with that nickname, decades ago, on the grounds that it was funny because it made it sound like she was someone's elderly auntie. She'd acted the part half the time, even at twenty something. Now she actually looked like an aunt, although admittedly an aunt in blue and silver splendor. You could have put a cardigan on her and stuck her in a aerobic knitting group and Taako wouldn't have batted an eye. 

"Whatever you want to call me is fine," she said, then quickly reconsidered because she was a smart lady, underneath it all, "Just Lucretia or Director, actually." She looked distinctly awkward in his room, somewhat in shambles after the Hunger ravaged the base, but mostly in shambles because Taako believed cleaning was something you contracted rather than an activity anyone freely engaged in. 

"Sure thing, Lucky L," Taako said with a lazy smile, "Pop a squat on a beanbag. They're very comfortable. Hope you didn't wake anyone else up on your way in. Merle is still sleeping off the party."

Lucretia dragged a beanbag over across to him and folded herself into it, "I noticed," she said, with the air of a houseguest being polite and pointedly not mentioning that Lup and Barry had left several articles of clothing strewn about when they'd disappeared last night, and that Avi was also still asleep, on the couch, shirtless. 

"So, what brings you to mon repose?" he asked, when it became clear that Lucretia wasn't going to volunteer the information herself. 

She looked awkward, which wasn't a good sign. The woman had kept up a passable game face through the whole memory erasing incident, run an entire organization, and once dealt with Magnus stripping in front of her (although to be fair, it hadn't been the first time for a long shot, he took his clothes off fast and sometimes for no apparent reason). If this was the thing that broke her resolve, Taako didn't want to be around for it. He left emotions to the more emotionally capable; read, anyone other than him. 

"I heard about Wonderland," she started, which wasn't a great beginning. The awfulness of that little adventure had gotten swept up in the awfulness of _literally everything else_ , but he still didn't love remembering it. Sometimes, he tripped over things without meaning too and just stood in shock for a while, readjusting. The other parts were even worse.

Besides, looking back, those lich twins had totally been stealing his and Lup's style. 

"Yeah," he said, "that sucked, so thank you. Another real win for Lucretia right there."

For a second, he thought she was going to cry. The unfamiliar taste of guilt, vaguely like garlic but not as pleasant, seemed to strangle him. The problem with having friends was that when they did terrible things and you got mad, you felt bad about it afterwards. 

"I knew what I was doing," she said finally, with the certainty of a zealot. Lup had always been the pyromaniac on the team and Magnus had once broken someone's arm by accident, but Lucretia terrified him, "And I'm very sorry, but I don't regret it. I just wanted to say, I know what it's like to come back, to feel like you're missing pieces of yourself. Some losses can be more difficult to cope with than others."

Little Lucretia, quiet and made of soft shapes, faded in and out of Taako's vision, replacing and being replaced by older Lucretia, with her map of wrinkles and her tired eyes. The connection between the two Lucretias was Wonderland, the same way the connection between the new tightness in Taako's chest and frailty in his body was tied back to it. Even when you disappeared a place from the earth it stuck around. 

"I bet that wasn't fun," Taako told her, and it was the closest he came to sympathy. She'd lost twenty years. For a human, that was a lot. He wasn't entirely clear on how much, but at least twice as much as ten, and ten had done a number on Magnus. 

 _I'm glad my appearance didn't change_ , he thought, and then he remembered with the sickly lurch of someone stopping too fast for their body to handle, that it had. 

Illusion spells didn't last long. Disguise Self only gave him an hour, give or take. He was good about renewing it though, and very good about taking naps, even in a crisis. Sleeping was a habit he and Lup had picked up young and never fully shaken. So far, the spell hadn't faltered. At least not where any one else could see it. 

He knew Magnus and Merle knew, but they hadn't mentioned it. Lup knew, he could feel it in his bones, but she hadn't brought it up either, because using your words was for babies and Magnus. Not being identical was new to them, so they were dealing with it how they dealt with most things, by ignoring it. 

"It really wasn't," Lucretia said, "I can still remember leaving that place. I barely made it out of the wilds, I was injured so badly. I left a friend in there, did you know that? He only had one leg and a torso when I last saw him, and a bad case of poisoning. The wheel wasn't kind to him. I fared better, but not by much. Half blind, losing blood fast, in a body I was still new too. Getting old all at once is difficult. I must have pulled my back a dozen times on that trip, which wasn't my biggest problem but didn't help."

"We left with Barry," Taako told her helpfully, "Although we didn't know he was Barry at the time. He was just a stranger in a red robe who saved our lives and then took us to his weird cave and got naked. Also Magnus was a mannequin which was, like, less than ideal."

"That sounds terrible," she said honestly, a picture of dignity even in a lime green bean bag. 

"Eh. We weren't bleeding out, so I'd count that as a major plus. On the other hand, we didn't have your fancy moon base to come back to, so let's call it Even Stevens." Downplaying how miserable that long slog out, in blood stained clothes with a weird red ghost, seemed like the best option. He was an expert in grousing, but sometimes you have to be the bigger elf. 

Lucretia smiled, a pulled together smile, pinched in at the ends, "We actually didn't have the moon back then, which is a weird sentence now that I think about it. I went back to the Miller's lab. They patched me up. I must have slept for a week. I cried in Maureen's lap, which, once again, looking back is maybe not a choice I would have made. But... they were very kind to me. They helped me through a stressful situation. And before I returned to the headquarters of what would become the Bureau of Balance, Maureen gave me a gift."

"She's a cool lady," Taako said hesitantly, "She was the robot, right?"

He wasn't being paid attention to anymore, which he didn't appreciate after someone barged in and sat on his bean based floor chairs. Lucretia was rummaging through the heavy layers of her robes. Eventually she pulled out a small, black velvet jewelry box, possibly salvaged from someone's anniversary present. It was worn and faded and clearly repurposed, but he pretended it wasn't, if only to shift the spotlight back to its proper place. 

"Lucretia, you shouldn't have! I can't say I'm not flattered, but isn't this moving a bit too fast? I am but a young elf prone to making dick jokes and you are a stately lady of means. Also, uh, you're not really my type, and I'm already in a relationship with a fella..."

She threw the box in his lap and rubbed her temples. "Just open the pan-damned present, Taako."

Inside was either a brooch or a terrible earring. It had a pin, a face inlaid with a pattern in tiny stones, and a larger, dangling, clear gem that reflected back light in many colors. Amateur eyes sized it up and decided no one sensible would set a diamond so loosely. Costume jewelry then, cheap, but pretty.  Well, he was a cheap but pretty guy. It was his style. It wasn't so much Lucretia's

Magic shone from every millimeter of it, not even bothering to hide itself. He looked it over, the silver gilt and the probably glass gem, looking for tricks or traps. 

"Illusion magic," Lucretia supplied, helpfully, "I had it made for you, as soon as things settled down a bit. I know you can never fully replace what Wonderland takes away, but we find ways around that, don't we? You've been using a lot of magic on spells for it, I think. It seemed sensible to cut out the middleman. Davenport and Leon helped mock this up. It's a quick fix,we'll try to make a nicer, more permanent one later, but it should perfectly replicate what you would look like if Wonderland hadn't, ah, changed you. It will shift with you, change with your hairstyles, if you want to wear makeup, that sort of thing, and it won't take up spell slots. It was quite the project, let me tell you."

His hand closed over it reflexively, but all he could think was that it must have been hard for her approaching Davenport. They still weren't exactly on the nicest of terms. Even when you meant well, years of a memory wipe _hurt_. Then he recognized the next name she had cited and instantly did another check for obvious traps on the item. It wasn't that he regretted his games with Leon, Taako lived a no regret life, but he did suddenly wish there was another artificer on the moon who didn't wish him quite so ill.

"And you're sure Leon didn't slip a little something-something on it?" he said, holding it at arms length and inspecting it from every angle. "He's a wily one, you know that, right?"

"I think you might be projecting," Lucretia said dryly. "No, it's all good."

He stared at her until she caved. 

"He tried to put a permanent piece of spinach in your teeth in the spell framework, but I caught it and made him take it out," she sighed, "Is there anyone on my base you haven't antagonized?"

"You, apparently," Taako muttered, and held the piece close to his chest once again. Suspicion and the immediate urge to put it on battled in his mind, like titans of old, whose wars made mountains and formed oceans. "Fuck, Lucretia, what am I supposed to say about this? Thanks, I guess? I'm still kind of mad at you, but thanks? Hey, good job kind of making up for this identity altering injury I took on a mission you sent us on, real sweet of you."

Lucretia didn't flinch. "I'm not looking for thanks, Taako. You are my- you were my friend once. I wanted to give you a gift, because... when I was in Wonderland I wagered a better portion of my sight. It was devastating, especially for a writer like me. When I got out and finally realized how bad the damage was, I was heartbroken. All those years, all those little used skills, little of it mattered compared to the loss of my ability to see what was around me clearly. What use was an observer who could not observe?" 

 _What use was a TV host without the face of a brand, or a twin who didn't match the set?_ It hit far too close to home. It was in his backyard having a cookout. 

"Maureen helped me, in the end. She reminded me that just because we are injured, doesn't mean we have to accept those injuries and the effects they have on us. The people who ran Wonderland didn't really expect many of their victims to get out. The damage they wrought was permanent, but not impossible to work around." She reached up, and to Taako's mild horror, poked herself in the eye. He realized she was pulling out contacts, though they were thicker than any he'd seen on the worlds they'd visited before. "These were her gift to me. They don't fix what happened, they don't erase it, but they let me put things back to rights. Combined with my reading glasses, it lets me control how Wonderland affects me. The aging we couldn't fix, at least not without some rather extreme measures that I wasn't willing to resort to, but I can have this. I can let them not win on this front."

"Huh," Taako said.

He clipped the brooch to the front of his shirt and felt the magic wash over him. Once he was absolutely sure the spell was active, he got up, went over to his crowded dresser mirror, and let his Disguise Spell self, already running low after a long, feeling heavy talk with the Creesh, drop. 

All things considered, it didn't look half bad. His teeth were flawless again and spinach free. His hair had bounce, his skin glowed. 

Lup's face and his, slightly changed but still a reassuring constant, was staring back at him in the mirror. It felt good to be back. Lydia and Edward could take their suffering talk and eat it, he _deserved_ this. 

He spun twice, then, satisfied that there were no obvious flaws with the illusion, fell back into his beanbag. Lucretia was smiling faintly at him and blinking like she'd just put her contact back in. 

"Screw those weird undead guys and their stupid wheel, and I right?" he said and her smile morphed into a full blown grin. "Sure am glad we killed them. Did Lup tell you about how she ate that dude? I heard it was pretty awesome."

"No, I haven't gotten that story yet," Lucretia admitted, "I'll have to ask the others about it, if they'll tell me."

He fidgeted for a second. "Hey, Madame Director Luc, how'd you know about what I lost in Wonderland? Because I sure as hell know I didn't tell you." It was probably rude, but it had been preying on his mind. Besides, they'd spent one hundred years together, rudeness had long ago lost most meaning. Now, in this new uncertain state, was the time to establish new boundaries and if he didn't act now he was going to have to spend the next hundred years getting to know her again. 

"I, um," she looked a little hot around the over-starched collar. Someone was going to have to remind her of casual Fridays, "Lup, may have mentioned it in passing. Not to me specifically, it was more of a general rant at me. It seemed to really upset her though, and I did notice you had less spellslots then usual," she confessed, "It didn't take long to put them together. It seemed unfair, I wanted to help. For the sake of old friendships."

"Well it was nice? I guess?" Taako toed the edge of sentiment before going all in. "It was definitely nice. Like, really fucking nice, and a thing that only a good person would do, probably. And Lucretia?"

"Yes, Taako?" she said, looking like she dreaded what he was about to say. 

"You're our friend. Our mind erasing, old lady friend who wears way too fancy clothes."

She beamed, and just for a second, he could imagine the young woman, barely older than Magnus, underneath the crow's feet and frown lines. 

They sat, in a companionable silence, for a little longer. 

"Hey, Lucretia?"

"What is it, Taako?"

"I am going to hack the hell out of this, you know that, right? I'm going to have fangs and the coolest color changing eyes. None of you have a chance at costume parties anymore. You've spelled your own demise."

For the first time in a hundred years, he heard Lucretia snort with laughter. 


End file.
